Everyday life in a rickety old French farmhouse with two very lively Polish Lowland Sheepdogs.
A record of those little things too unimportant for a diary but too important to be forgotten.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Bob is less forgiving.

The storm passes us by. More pussy cat than tiger. The local villages are less lucky. Landslides, power outages, trees down. We get ten minutes of desultory rain, they get floods.

The red trousered kitchen designer texts to say that the new fridge will be delivered at seven in the morning. We take this with a pinch of salt. In deepest France profonde nothing ever gets delivered before eleven . Imagine our surprise when a white van rolls into the courtyard right on time. Bob and Sophie are overjoyed.

The delivery men don't want to carry the new fridge up to the kitchen . '' We're not paid to lift things ". Angus is temporarily taken aback by this but suggests they take the fridge back to the warehouse. The two men confer. They decide that as its only a short flight of steps they can after all carry it. This is when the problems start. The fridge is 2 centimetres wider than the door. After saying something remarkably rude the delivery men leave. A call is made to the kitchen fitter who says he'll get someone over next week to 'sort things out'. He's told to think again.

In the afternoon two carpenters arrive to widen the door. Bob and Sophie are keen to help. To save the carpenters sanity the PONs are imprisoned in the kitchen. Sophie accepts this incarceration with hopeful good grace. Bob is less forgiving. He wants to play throw the furry fox with the workmen. He howls with frustration. Why be indoors when you could be outside living life in the fast lane ?

17 comments:

Well, the ROF was built long before the days of refrigerators - especially monster ones like your new one, so it's not surprising it wouldn't go through the doorway ! On the upside, there will be plenty of space for PON sausages....

Interesting article. It was not long ago, that Australia was strictly meat and 3 vege. Friends talk about their parents first seeing a plate of spaghetti or other 'foreign muck'. Now it's cosmopolitan.....even here in the Central West.

So happy to hear that everyone at the ROF is safe and sound, and that there was no damage from the storm...sorry that others were not that fortunate.I have never heard such folly regarding delivery....although I think that new policy (I'm only paid to deliver) may be catching on here. I like how you handled the situation by telling them they could take the fridge back.It seems as if food habits change daily these days with all the new food fads that emerge on what seems like an hourly basis.

As a third-generation angeleno (whose grandfather emmigrated from Edinburgh, by the way) I found the New Yorker article fascinating. The map in the illistration was drawn the year I was born! The cultural diversity of this city is wonderfully experienced through food. I'm currently on a chicken schwarma exploration. Can't get enough!! Otto and Ruby enjoy simple rotisserie chicken!

Good to hear the storm spared your village. We were quite worried.The new thing, here, is curbside delivery. The delivery men offload your appliance in front of your house and then it's up to you to find some cooperative neighbors to help wrangle it in.Greek yogurt has completely taken over here. Among my mother's things I found a breakfast menu from the Queen Mary. Obviously from a parallel universe.

A breakfast menu from the Queen Mary. Tres chic. Someone told 'The Font' this week that the new Queen Mary is the only ocean going liner left. All the others are simply large cruise ships. The difference between an ocean goer and a cruise ship is apparently all too obvious mid-Atlantic.

About Me

2004, we sell the rain drenched farm in Scotland and move to the warmth of southern Europe. Two very lively Polish Lowland Sheepdog brothers - Wilf and Digby - accompany us. Fluffy,patient and comical . Forever attracting laughter and new friends . After a year in Provence we moved to Italy to restore an ancient Roman watchtower . Somethings are meant not to be. Following a rather unpleasantly violent 'housejacking' ( the third in our little village ) we left Italy in late 2009 for new adventures in the rolling countryside of south west France . We are now getting to grips with a large rickety old farmhouse. Life after the violence of Italy has a gentler tempo. Digby passed on from piroplasmosis in May 2010. HIs brother, despite being diagnosed with cancer and having become blind ,soldiered on for another two years. We now embark on the next part of our journey with two new PON's - Bob and Sophie. This blog records all those little things about living with dogs that are too unimportant to make it into a diary but which make life, life.